One life. Live it

like the selfish, wasteful bollix that you are…

The slogan fits the car so well.
You’ve never been snowed in. Not in Blackrock, no. You’ve never had to gather cattle in the Wicklow mountains.
You’ve never needed a big shaggin petrol guzzling 4×4.

95% of your mileage is done in the city center.

You have one life, and boy you are living it.

Like a tumor.

I don’t quite believe that you belong to the same species as the guys who built Newgrange.
You are one stage of evolution further.

On the path to oblivion.

Overall, not a good day

But mine didn’t end suddenly in the grill of a Norn Iron Ford Unfocused.

Classic beauty

It’s old.
But it never ages.
It’s beautiful.
But it has a leaky roof.

Who gives a shit, it never rains in Ireland.

It’s a classic beauty.

If the snow won’t come to you…

… then get in the car and go to the snow.

It was just a half hour drive to the Dublin mountains (hills for anyone else on the planet).
The snow was there. The hesitant drivers who should never be allowed near a road with 1 inch of snow were there.
The kids complained that it was bitterly cold (it was).
But they had fun.
Especially when I sank to my knees in snow and ice and icy cold wet turf.

This morning I had a happy surprise. So near yet so far. But more about that weird feeling of being-half-a-grand-richer-and-yet-feeling-poor sometime soon.

I haven’t quite digested it yet.

 

Cleared for landing

They’re back, my monochromatic buddies!

They always bring a smile to my face (a smile to my arse would require too many contortions).

I just let them have a few minutes of happy grazing before warning them that their water charge registration pack (of hyenas) would soon be on its way.

The Fear

I see her in my dreams.
The Killer Granny in the silver Micra.

The steely determination with which she ignores all rules of the road known to man. And unknown to granny.
The regularity with which she hits the 6,000 RPM in second gear.
The screams of the 1.1 engine.
The screams of the crushed cyclist.
The screams of terror as I wake up in a sweat.

I see her in my dreams.
The Killer Granny in the silver Micra.

I am the cornered squirrel and she is the cobra.
I am transfixed by so much beauty. Cruel beautiful beauty. Lethal beautiful silvery shiny beauty. Blue-rinsy shiny shiny silvery killer beauty.

She chases me. My foot slips on the pedal. She is pedal to the metal. My bike wobbles. The engine screams. And just beneath the scream of the engine I can hear it. And my blood freezes. I can hear it. The Nissanity of her laughter.

I see her in my dreams.
The Killer Granny in the silver Micra.

Good Christmas trees don’t go to heaven…

 

… they get mulched and turned into Magic Trees.

Unless this new fragrance catches on. 

On a side note, it is rumoured that Christmas is over. 
Good thing I don’t pay heed to rumours. 
I am waiting for an official announcement.

Motoring happily together forever after

or until exit 3 doth us apart.

While uploading this shot I am reminded of one of my strangest driving experiences ever.
It was many moons ago, in North Carolina, when Mrs mememe2U and I could hop on a plane and jet off* somewhere for the weekend to feed a new variety of mosquitoes.

The rental car was my first (and hopefully last) vehicle equipped with cruise control.

The guys who invented the automatic gear box to take the fun out of driving (you can’t for love nor money rent a real car with a gear stick in the US) were small players compared to the sadist who invented the cruise control.

It makes for the ultimate boring driving experience.

You don’t really know what to do with you feet. But you still have to hold the steering wheel, so it’s not like you can hop on the back seat for a nap (or a cuddle with Mrs mememe2U, we were young, childless and energetic back in the days…)

And then there is this guy in the Chevrolet, also equipped with cruise control, on the otherwise deserted motorway, also heading for the Outer Banks.

There was this guy, I kid you not, whose car’s cruise control was set to a faster “cruising” speed, by perhaps a 100th of a kilometer per hour.
Well…. He proceeded to overtake us, and, I still kid you not, it must have taken him 75 kilometers to do so.

You know that awkward moment when you are sitting at the traffic lights and there is a car exactly level with yours, and you have turned you head to the side, and you have made eye contact with the driver beside you, but you don’t want to be staring, and you look ahead of you now, and him too, and both are sort of afraid to look sideways again, or so you can tell from checking him from the corner of your eye?

Well imagine that situation. At exactly 100 km/hour. When he is doing 100.02 km/hour, over 75 kilometers and you are swearing under your breath that with one swift move of the steering wheel you are going to smash into him and make sure that his car explodes in a ball of fire in the central part of the motorway specifically designed to turn rude cruise controllers into an impromptu barbecue.

The alternative being to switch off your own cruise control (just pressing on the accelerator does the trick) and then either speed ahead, giving him the finger, or decelerate and let him control-cruise ahead of you.

But that would be admitting defeat.

Almost 2,000 consecutive days of posting one shot a day and I realised this evening that (up until now), I had never been that “guy with the camera on the motorway bridge”.

I had to do something about it.

But no way, get lost, I am not doing light trails. Go away!

I am not going to be that “guy with the camera and the tripod on the motorway bridge”

* I make it sound like we were millionaires but this is sadly not the case. We both worked for an airline and paid shag all for plane tickets…

Which is convenient, because we both got paid shag all for working for an airline.

Quick! Chain me back to an LCD screen

 

With the school summer fete hot on the heels of the trip to Tayto Park, I can safely say, and not without a healthy dose of incredulity, that I am looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.

Jaysus, have I really just typed this?!

The kids seemed to have a great time, between ingesting huge amount of sugary shite, begging their parents for more money to play the ping pong ball challenge and having meltdowns at regular intervals…

They also got their faces painted.

 

From either of the mums vying for the title of Official Face Painter Summer Fete 2013. 

I guess that since the point of the exercise is fund raising, a healthy dose of competition is welcome.

Even if it wasn’t particularly healthy, but more catty, in a feral (not to say rabid) sort of way.

After a while I decided to take Luca for a spin to Bull Island (no bulls, but shitloads of huge 4x4s with bullbars, and badly burnt bare chest drivers guzzling cans of cider).

And realised that a 3rd of the population (and half it motorists) had decided to do exactly the same thing.

Double whopper

Four spaces for two cretins.

2×2 for the 4×4 and his van-the-man mate.

I spotted them instantly inside the service area’s deserted Burger King.

They were both hurriedly shoving double whoppers in their big ravenous gobs. How adequate…

Game of the week:

Where is Mrs mememe2u?

Couldn’t find her? Aw, go on, you get a second chance!

Not for fainthearted: when good (well sort of…) pets turn bad. Seconds before the savage attack

Today weather you ask? I can barely believe it as I type: not changeable, oh no! Today was: sunny!(?)